Note 57 — CHAPTER THE SECOND

When the glacial theory of their formation was young and argumentative it encountered at first a sneering opposition from Sir Roderick Murchison, the famous geologist, who in 1864 wrote as follows to Sir William Denison: “In my anniversary address to the Geological Society you would see the pains I have taken to moderate the icemen, who would excavate all the rock-basins by glaciers eating their way into solid rocks.” But he failed to “moderate the icemen”; and Sir Roderick himself, a few years before his death, gave what is called “a tardy acquiescence” to their evidence. He became a frigid iceman. As Dr. Robert Munro has said, evidence which may be clear and convincing to one trained mind may not have the same effect on another—a fact which should at least warn us to be tolerant in matters of opinion.